Intro to Object-Oriented JavaScript

Object-oriented programming is an approach to programming that helps you conceptualize and organize your code in a way that will make it more structured and more easily maintainable. Remember in high school geometry when you learned that all squares are rectangles, but not all rectangles are squares? As a programmer, you can think about that relationship in an object-oriented way: the squares and rectangles are your "objects", and squares "inherit" some of their properties from rectangles.

In this class, we'll give an overview of object-oriented programming and spend most of our time with hands-on experience to learn the major concepts. Note that object-oriented programming is an approach that's useful in a variety of programming languages, but we'll practice in JavaScript for this class.

We will be using http://jsbin.com/ [teacher's edit: updated link to new tool] for this class, so you will be able to code everything in your browser without the need for HTML or domain space. Before coming to class, please familiarize yourself with this site. If you still have questions, we will be happy to answer them in class as we start the exercises.

What this class will cover:

• What is object-oriented programming?

• How can you use object-oriented programming to make your code more maintainable?

• Getting started with some examples

Prerequisites: Students should be fairly familiar with JavaScript. You should have taken our Intro to JavaScript class and/or understand how to write functions in JavaScript, how to call those functions and how to access properties of JavaScript objects.

About the teacher:

Tracy Russell has been a software developer for over five years at athenahealth, where she works on their web-based electronic medical record system. In a former life, Tracy was a grad student with a penchant for theoretical computer science and for being an awesome TA. As a strong proponent of sustaining work-life balance, Tracy stops working at a reasonable hour, leaving time for her to cook, work on crafts, play video games, and watch lots of HGTV. Tracy is also an avid practitioner of chado, the way of tea, so you might spot her in a kimono at the Japanese house in Fairmont Park.

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